Chasing Your Dreams

I Followed My Passions And It Didn't Work Out: A Paramedic's Story

I pressed the CHARGE button on the defibrillator and listened to the rising electronic crescendo. When it reached its peak, I hit SHOCK and 30 joules of electricity was delivered. The ECG strip printed out and I held it up to the rising sun, “USER TEST OK.” This was my first shift back as a paramedic in Los Angeles after a three-year hiatus. In 2012, I left my job of eight years in emergency medicine to pursue the millennial mantra of “follow your passion” — I wanted to be a full-time writer. I romanticized the idea, like many before, dreaming of scribbling away in my Moleskine in Paris cafes, or standing on my porch at my lakeside Wyoming cabin wearing a chunky knit sweater and drinking a cup of coffee while my supermodel / editor girlfriend was cooking bacon.

So I quit my job and took a gamble on myself, knowing that I could always go back if needed. We always read articles about the app inventors or bloggers that “made it” because of Survivorship Bias. We only hear these stories because of what they’ve accomplished, and therefore people want to listen. But we never hear about the people that didn’t make it. So before you quit your Manhattan finance job or your HR generalist position at that shipping company in Boise, I’ll tell you what happened to me, someone that “followed” his passion and it didn’t work.

“Follow Your Passion.” — Millennial Mantra

I didn’t have a plan when I left my job. I just left. It’s a good rule to have a plan when you do something that drastic, but I didn’t want not having a plan to prevent me from taking action. For the sake of more steady hours, I worked briefly at my friend's tablet company so I could spend my mornings writing, and in 2013, I got my first paying client as a freelance writer. Cubicle life then became too time consuming, so I decided to live somewhere where the U.S. dollar would go farther. That idea transformed into backpacking through South America. I started in Bogota and made my way south, making friends along the way, seeing the coffee country of Salento, walking across the Bolivian Salt flats, watching a soccer match in Buenos Aires, and hiking up to Machu Picchu to take the same Tinder profile pic as everyone else.

All the while, to keep my writing going, I kept up a travel blog that kept me disciplined. But by constantly moving, I was upsetting the consistency of routine that a writer needs. The only place I stayed still was for a few weeks in Lima, Peru, where I worked as a bartender. With stability in mind, I decided on an extended layover in my favorite city, Paris, where I got an apartment in the 17th arrondissement. I tried twice to take advantage of the writer’s residence at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore, but there weren’t any available beds. My plan in Paris was to write and take another stab at learning French.

In that one month, the allure of cafes, the Seine, une bouteille de vin, and my friends Laetitia, Daniela and Julie became (welcome) distractions from my goals.

When I returned to Los Angeles, I got an apartment in downtown L.A. and started working for a production studio, getting a small taste of my hometown export of “entertainment.” In 2015, I decided to refocus and dedicate my entire time to writing without distractions. I got an article published in the LA Times and finished the second draft of my cowboy noir novel, but with too many hours in the day, I found it too easy to procrastinate and put off the actual work of doing something as mentally taxing as writing. With my savings dwindling and the poison of too much time, I knew what I had to do — I had to go back to work.